On TV: The real power brokers

The vice president is the second most powerful job in the country, right?

Maybe not, according even to some of those who have occupied the No. 2 spot. Folks like former Vice President Dick Cheney, who says in a new documentary about White House chiefs of staff that the position of Veep might fall short of besting the chief of staff position when it comes to true power, influence and authority.

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“The White House chief of staff has more authority and more power than the vice president,” Cheney says in the documentary.

“You could very well make the argument that the White House chief of staff is the second most powerful job in government,” said James A. Baker III. The former chief of staff to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush also, semi-jokingly, referred to it as the worst job in government.

“That goes to show you how tough the job is,” Chris Whipple, one of the filmmakers behind “The President’s Gatekeepers,” a four-hour program being aired on the Discovery Channel over two nights beginning Wednesday. The film turns its lens on chiefs of staff, with all 20 living alumni of the job (covering nine presidencies) sitting down to talk about their experience.

The film does, in fact, make the case for the job’s influence within 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. — Donald Rumsfeld called it “the toughest job I ever had” while he was chief of staff to President Gerald Ford — but Whipple doesn’t exactly believe Cheney’s contention, considering that Cheney gave the vice presidency unusually enhanced powers during the Bush years.

The film also makes it clear that the job is one of the most difficult in Washington.

“It’s brutal on you, it’s brutal on your family,” Rahm Emanuel says in the film. “Nothing, nothing, nothing ever comes easy. … And it is constant.” So intense was the exhaustion that Emanuel describes being on the phone while reading to his children in bed and then falling asleep before the book ends.

“And you’re woken up at 1 in the morning with probably something bad happening around the world.”

“Cheney says he blames the stress for his first [heart] attack on the job, which was a year after he left as Gerald Ford’s chief of staff,” Whipple said.

Getting all of the former chiefs of staff to participate wasn’t an easy task.

“These guys have spent their careers keeping the presidents’ secrets, not spilling them,” Whipple said. So why’d they agree?

“I think it was because, at the end of the day, I think they realized that they were flattered that we were paying attention to this job, this job that almost gets lost in the Cabinet. You hear about the president and the secretary of defense, but nobody had really come at this in quite this way, with respect for the job the way we did. And, as a result, these guys opened up more than they would have.”

Because of the stress of the job, few last more than a few years (Andrew Card, chief of staff for George W. Bush, was an exception, having lasted five years). Whipple says that there’s one chief of staff who clearly is viewed as tops: Baker.

“There’s no secret sauce but Jim Baker, everybody says — Republicans and Democrats alike — was the guy with the sauce. He was the gold standard. He had that combination of political skill and the ability to turn Ronald Reagan around on a dime when he had to on policy or tactics. He was the closest confidant, the most powerful adviser, the consigliere and the guy who keeps everybody on the same page. It was a hell of a tough job.”

CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this article, the TV schedule was incorrect.